So says Michael Burleigh in the Times (thanks to William):
AMSTERDAM”S Linnaeusstraat is a bleak place to die. Lined with budget stores and overshadowed by a railway bridge, it is largely populated by Muslim immigrants. On November 3 last year, the film-maker Theo van Gogh halted his bike in the cycle lane. The anti-clerical van Gogh had made many films criticising Christianity and Judaism, as well as Submission, an indictment of Islam’s treatment of women, based on the experiences of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch-Somali MP.
Muhammad Bouyeri, a young Moroccan, came alongside Van Gogh. He shot him in the side, propelling van Gogh to the ground. The victim managed to get up, lurching through the traffic. Bouyeri tracked his victim, shooting him twice more before trying to cut his head off with a butcher’s knife. He then rammed a smaller knife into Van Gogh’s chest, with a letter threatening two Dutch politicians slipped over the blade.
Bouyeri ran into a park, where he was captured. He had a poem in his robes, which included the line: “The knights of death are at your heels.” He belonged to a small Islamist radical cell conspiring to blow up Schiphol airport. He is now serving a life sentence for murder. The Dutch reaction to the murder has been ferocious, up to and including banning wearing of the burka.
Islamist terrorism is not a phantom product of our nightmares and neuroses, but a real and present danger in the world. There have been devastating attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, 9/11, Bali, at Atocha station in Madrid and the July suicide bombings in London, commemorated this week. At present, Australia is on high alert.
Read it all.